


In Re: the Verger Baby

by Match (pachipachi)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cameo by the Author, F/F, Metafiction, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 20:59:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17926253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pachipachi/pseuds/Match
Summary: Alana stops worrying the day her test comes back positive. Before, she’d hought of motherhood in vague terms: if/then, maybe someday, the right man. Now she has Margot and a turkey baster and a means to get them both free. What better reason is there, really?





	In Re: the Verger Baby

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr. This may be the most widely-read fanwork I've ever written; I have feelings about that but I don't know what they are.

I once knew a woman who was good at being pregnant. I didn’t know her well, but we attended the same drop-in yoga class for a few years. The knock-on effect of having a consistent yoga practice with the same small group is learning the peculiarities of someone’s body even as you keep forgetting their name.

This woman had a naturally open, hyperflexible spine. In sessions where we focused on backbend poses, she would move into Camel or Upward Bow effortlessly and keep going, seeking the full extension of the pose. It was extraordinary to watch: the rest of us back on our mats untwisting the insides of our shoulders, her still arched, the instructor giving correction and guidance as she inched hands and feet ever closer to each other, or allowed her heart-center to sink closer to the floor.

In the time that we practiced together she gave birth to one daughter who she was raising and another child she placed in an open adoption. There might have been another child she’d given up before I met her, I’m not sure. I do know she loved all her children and would go on loving them, no matter if she saw them every moment or a few times a year.

Pregnancy is a sea change. (I’m speaking in the abstract here; I don’t expect I’ll ever know this from the inside out.) Even in the best-case scenario it’s all-consuming, often grueling. There are worst-case scenarios that can feel like a suicide pact, and some of them more or less are. I’ll allow that maybe I only saw this woman on her best days. But every day I saw her she had that glow, a singularity of purpose shimmering around her. It seemed to me that her body held no storms she couldn’t weather, and she knew it.

I want to give all this to Alana Bloom. I want to give her an uncomplicated pregnancy and easy birth. The universe places no limit on how much pain a person might be required to endure, but I do.

Alana stops worrying the day her test comes back positive. Before, she’d hought of motherhood in vague terms: if/then, maybe someday, the right man. Now she has Margot and a turkey baster and a means to get them both free. What better reason is there, really?

It’s Margot who worries. She researches different brands of prenatal vitamins. She has the OB-GYN on speed-dial. She prints out articles on gestational diabetes and preeclampsia and the pros and cons of amniocentesis. She knows exactly what Alana is and isn’t supposed to eat and changes her own diet to match. She interviews four prospective doulas before Alana tells her to knock it off.

Alana drops the articles in the recycling without reading them. She has a canned speech for her most hypochondriac patients, about the worried well and the danger of too much unfiltered information. Instead she says: _tonight I want to have a beer. One won’t do any harm_.

It’s a Sierra Nevada Pale. Margot’s Aperol spritzer is the palest pink, mostly bubbles and ice.

This is when they have the conversation about sex-selective abortion. I don’t know what they say to to each other, nor do I know Alana’s answer. I think they might tell me, which is why I won’t ask.

The second trimester is hell on Alana’s newly reconstructed pelvis, and it only gets worse. It took months for her body to knit itself together and now there’s a blind kicking thing inside her, testing the seams. Extra-strength Tylenol is no substitute for Percocet, but it’s all she’s allowed on account of the baby. And not too much of that, because it can cause liver damage.

Margot offers herbal remedies that don’t help at all and heating pads that don’t help all that much. She touches Alana more often, and holds her tighter. It doesn’t help with the pain. But it helps.

Towards the end Alana has to go back to using a wheelchair. _Don’t get me something fancy_ , she tells Margot. _I want the same model as before. At least I won’t have to relearn the basics_. And yes, on the surface it resembles the worst, most wobbly stage of her recovery, but it feels like a retrenchment. Alana is doubling down on her new life. She feels doubled. What was a faraway glint; then a blind kicking thing; then _a healthy fetus, everything checks out, perfectly normal_ is making itself into a real baby. There is an entire, perfect, unknowable person inside her, and all three of them have a lifetime to get to know one another.

It goes without saying that Alana has to give birth via C-section. She insists on spinal anaesthesia, though, and the Johns Hopkins Birthing Center. She’ll be conscious, and Margot will be with her. The moment the Verger baby leaves her womb and the moment he is returned to her arms will be on the record. No hidden surgical suites, no fudged paperwork. That’s not Alana’s world and it doesn’t have to be Margot’s, not anymore.

Except now she and Margot have the same scar, for opposite reasons.

There’s no such thing as a happy ending on this damn show, but you can have one if you know when to quit. Here’s mine: we leave mothers and baby whole and healthy, with free uncharted lives ahead of them.


End file.
